


In Plain Sight

by wreckingthefinite



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Amsterdam, Basically because Bucky is a showoff, Belly Kink, Belly Rubs, Comfort Food, Exhibitionism, Feeding Kink, Food Kink, Food Porn, M/M, Marijuana, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Slow Burn, Voyeurism, Weight Gain, Weight Issues, but like mild voyeurism and exhibitionism?, chubby bucky
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-08
Updated: 2016-03-12
Packaged: 2018-05-25 11:02:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6192505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wreckingthefinite/pseuds/wreckingthefinite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Steve goes looking for Bucky and finds a whole lot more than he expected.  </p><p>Or: I imagine what might be happening between Steve and Bucky when Bucky is on the run and Steve and Sam go looking for him post-WS.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SevereStorms](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SevereStorms/gifts).



> Brace yourself for a slow burn, a small dose of plot, and a bigger dose of kink, as I am wont to write. Props to the lovely SevereStorms for the wonderful prompt. All the credit--and this fic--goes to her!

_1939_

When Bucky comes home one evening with a pie, Steve looks instantly miffed, chin tilted up at that dangerous Steve-Rogers-Will-Fight-The-Whole-Goddamn-World angle that Bucky knows so well. 

“Hey, pal,” Bucky says. He doesn’t know exactly what’s got Steve’s feathers ruffled, but he figures apple pie is a decent peace offering. He knows for a fact Steve likes it. “Look what Carrie Ann sent home with me.” He walks into their tiny little kitchen, where Steve is standing at the sink, and sets the pie down on the counter. 

Steve glares at the pie, then goes back to drying dishes. “Nice of her.” 

Bucky leans against the counter, considering Steve for a moment. It’s true—it _was_ nice of Carrie Ann. She’s a sweet girl, a pretty little brunette with soft skin and big green eyes that follow Bucky around the room. Bucky likes her, likes the way her wide hips feel under his palm when he runs his hand down from her waist to her thighs, likes the way her perfume smells like roses, likes how sometimes she gets a sparkle in her eye and sneaks a puff off of his cigarette, laughing and blowing neat little smoke rings when he teases her that a nice gal like herself shouldn’t pick up such a nasty habit. 

She’d marry him in a heartbeat, Bucky knows. Hell, that’s why she made him the damn pie, really. Show him what a good wife she’d be for him. Cook for him, love him, keep a house for him and fill it up with half a dozen or so pretty little dark-haired, light-eyed babies, which she could no doubt turn out with a charmingly Irish regularity. 

Bucky won’t marry her, though. No matter how many times he slides his hand up her skirt and thumbs her clit until she whimpers against his chest, no matter how much he likes pulling her onto his lap until she’s riding his thigh and grinding against him, soft and warm and sweet in his arms. No matter how much he likes her—and he does, he really does. No matter, even, how much he thinks he might like the life she’d give him. A pretty gal to come home to, a family to herd to mass on Sunday mornings. He won’t marry her or any of the other gals who’d happily be Mrs. James B. Barnes, if he would only ask. 

He doesn’t admit it, even to himself, but the reason he won’t ask any of them, even if he likes them, even if he likes the life they’d provide him with—well, the reason he won’t end up with any of those dames is standing right in front of him, furiously drying dishes like it’s some sort of injustice. 

“If it’s so nice, champ, why do you look madder than a wet hen?” Bucky drawls out the question, teasing Steve a little. 

“I ain’t mad,” Steve says instantly. 

“Then sit down and have a piece of pie with me. Carrie Ann’d be awful sore if I told her you wouldn’t even try it.”

Steve scoffs, tossing down the towel and crossing his arms. “Carrie Ann doesn’t care if I eat her damn pie, Buck.” 

Bucky smiles a little. Steve—sweet, bristle-y little Steve—always makes him smile. “Well I care. I gotta give her the pie tin back Saturday, so you gotta help me eat it.”

“Eat it yourself,” Steve grumbles. 

Bucky grabs a fork and plops down at their tiny little kitchen table. “Well come sit with me, at least.”

Steve does, although he looks grudging as all get out. He’s always like that, where Bucky’s girls are concerned. Acting put upon, like the very existence of gals that Bucky might sleep with is a cross Steve Rogers is forced to bear. 

Bucky loves it. He doesn’t think too much about why. He just enjoys it. 

He’s always enjoyed having Steve’s attention. Showing off for him a little bit, whether it’s punching some asshole in the jaw for Steve—although never implying that Steve wasn’t holding his own, exactly, because it’s a fine line Bucky has to walk to fight someone for Steve without offending him—or kissing a dame when he knows Steve’s watching. 

Maybe even just something simple, like carrying something heavy for Steve, when he knows Steve can’t do it. 

If he’s being honest with himself—and he usually isn’t, when the complicated snarl of emotions he has about Steve is concerned—most of the shit Bucky does on a daily basis is, somehow, for Steve. Working an extra shift on the docks to pay for Steve’s inhalers. Dancing with _all_ the prettiest girls at the dance hall, just to watch Steve’s face. Exaggerating a story until Steve grudgingly laughs. 

It’s all for Steve.

The pie really is good—a flaky, buttery crust over perfectly gooey apples, not too sweet, carefully spiced with cinnamon and brown sugar. Carrie Ann knows her stuff. Bucky shoves a particularly big bite into his mouth and then nudges the tin across the table toward Steve, passing the fork along as well. “Try it, huh?”

Steve does, and Bucky grins as Steve rolls his eyes and admits that yeah, it’s pretty good.

“Told you,” Bucky says, and Steve just nods, smiling a little and sliding the tin right back over to Bucky. 

“That’s all you want?” 

“You eat it,” Steve says.

Bucky shrugs. “Gonna have to—it’d hurt her feelings if I didn’t.”

It isn’t as if Bucky sits down intending to eat an entire pie. He’d really expected Steve to share, for one thing—and he hadn’t planned on even the two of them finishing the whole thing at once. But, as so often happens when Steve is concerned, Bucky decides, without much planning, to show off a little. 

So he eats. Talks to Steve between bites, steadily working his way through mouthfuls of tart apple and crust.

When he gets to the halfway point, Steve gives him a pointed look. “There is no way you can finish that thing, Bucky.”

Bucky considers. “I bet I could,” he says, mostly just because it’s a challenge, and it’s from Steve, so he can’t seem to turn it down. 

Steve grins. “You cannot eat an entire pie. Nope. Not gonna happen.”

Bucky rests his hand on his belly and thinks about it. He’s pretty full, but his stomach doesn’t actually hurt or anything, although his pants feel a little tight. He shrugs, popping the button open and giving Steve his best, most charming smile. “Can and will, Rogers.” Steve shakes his head, but he doesn’t get up from the table. Just leans forward on his pointy little elbows and settles in to watch. 

Bucky finishes it half an hour later, and Steve just laughs when he says he thinks he might explode. Laughs and tells him it serves him right. 

And if Bucky’s stomach hurts so bad later that evening that he’s miserable, half-nauseous and bloated? If he sleeps curled on his side, his stomach sore and achy? Well. It was worth it, just to see the look on Steve’s face. A little shock, a little disapproval—and his complete attention. 

*

_Now_

Steve and the other man—the man with wings, the man Steve called Sam—have been following him since Bucharest. 

They followed him over the Bulgarian border, and although he’d lost them for a bit in Sofia, they’d resurfaced quickly enough. Steve was a great tactician, a great soldier—but he wasn’t a spy. He might as well have been wearing a collar with a jingling bell, for all the stealth Steve was achieving. 

Bucky doesn’t, particularly, mind. There is a lot on his mind these days. The possibility of HYDRA scooping him back up. Or SHIELD, whatever was left of it. 

The fact that Steve Rogers, alias Captain America, is trailing him through Europe poses less of a concern. Honestly, Bucky sort of likes it. 

The memories he has of Steve are fuzzy and confusing, snatches of a life that he doesn’t really recall as his own. It is, sort of, like watching bits and pieces of a movie, all out of order, often without sound. Some of it makes sense. A lot of it doesn’t. 

But he knows that he likes Steve. Knows that he likes Steve paying attention to him. 

So when he gives Steve and Sam the slip in a little village in northern Bulgaria and boards a commercial flight to Amsterdam the next day, Bucky doesn’t really do it out of any serious desire to throw them off. 

It’s mostly out of the thrill of the chase. 

*

Bucky does not, entirely, know how to navigate the twenty-first century on his own. He remembers more and more of his time with HYDRA, his time out of cryo, but those instances of consciousness—sometimes periods of time as long as months—they aren’t really useful primers on how to function in the world. Even when he wasn’t actively in a war zone, he hadn’t exactly been sightseeing, either.

But Bucky— _the Soldier_ \--is smart, and he has been created as not just a weapon but a predator. He knows when to finesse a situation and when to rip something apart. He’d procured a forged passport and credit card numbers in America, a delicate operation which had required making contact with the Russian mob and applying some gentle persuasion. 

Acquiring cash was a much simpler task. He left behind the bodies of three low-level Bulgarian gangsters before he boarded his flight to Amsterdam, a wad of cash tucked securely in the front pocket of his jeans and another shoved into a pair of socks in his backpack, which he carried onto the flight with him. 

When he gets to Amsterdam, he hands over a small stack of euros for a week’s stay at a small, charmingly ramshackle hotel on the edge of the red light district. Then he settles in to wait for Steve to catch up. 

*

Being “on the run” sounds pretty exciting, even to Bucky, who has led arguably one of the most exciting lives anyone can ever imagine. (Of course, he has slept through most of it, but it still counts.) 

The thing is, though, except for the parts where you are actually, physically running? Being on the run is sort of boring. 

Every day, multiple times a day, Bucky does thorough perimeter checks and sweeps of his hotel for any sign of observers. He keeps his sight lines open, always, even when he appears to be strolling through the old medieval streets of Amsterdam’s historic city center, shoulder to shoulder with hordes of camera-wielding tourists. He blends in, mostly, looking like a slightly aged version of one the hipster twentysomethings roving through the city. His hair—grown out and tucked back in a little knot—and his backpack do a lot to solidify his cover. 

To entertain himself, Bucky ends up eating. Like any tourist city, the food culture in Amsterdam is thriving. The city is teeming with street vendors and takeaway shops that cater to the party crowd—and Amsterdam is a party town, legalized marijuana and prostitution driving a large portion of the tourism industry. On the city’s quieter streets, though, are restaurants offering eclectic global fare that is a legacy of Dutch colonialism. 

Bucky likes both aspects of the city—the trashy takeaway counters and the quieter restaurants tucked away on the side streets. He especially likes the Indian restaurants, where the food is spicy sweet and generously portioned. He recognizes the food—he must have eaten it, or something similar, at some point, although he can’t quite figure out when or where. No matter. It’s good—spicy and savory dishes, aromatic flat bread, sweet rice pudding to punctuate it. 

On his third day in the city, he finds a little hole-in-the-wall place near his hotel, in one of the seedier parts of the red light district. The restaurant is flanked on either side by buildings with tired prostitutes in their little window perches. In the harsh midday light, the women look older, sadder, than good-time-girls should look, and several of them are sending texts or smoking cigarettes, their expressions and body language bored and incongruous with their bright lingerie. 

Sad exterior aside, the restaurant is cozy and bright, just a small counter and a few scattered tables inside. Most of their business seems to be from takeaway orders, but Bucky is happy to settle into a corner table, his back against the wall, facing the door. The proprietor, likewise, seems perfectly happy to have a brooding, gloved stranger hulking in the corner of his restaurant, and he serves Bucky personally, bringing out steaming dishes of fragrant basmati rice, a heaping basket of naan baked with garlic and oil, dishes of spicy chicken vindaloo and creamy saag paneer, a sweet mango smoothie—the owner tells him it’s called a lassi—on top of it all. 

Bucky eats until his stomach hurts, until his jeans, which were getting tight before he ever set foot in The Netherlands, chafe at his waist. He slides nimble metal fingers under the hem of his hoodie and undoes the button so that he can breathe. When the owner brings him another basket of naan, he nods his thanks and starts in on it immediately. He doesn’t have anything better to do, particularly, and the novelty of an unlimited food supply is nowhere near wearing off yet.

*

One of the side effects of HYDRA’s super-serum—a rather unpleasant side effect—is that Bucky can hardly catch a buzz to save his damn life. He’s tried to drink before. Once his handler even let him have whiskey, all the whiskey he wanted, after a mission. He’d drunk most of a fifth before he’d given it up as a lost cause. 

So he knows he probably can’t get stoned, either. That doesn’t stop him from wandering into a coffeeshop one afternoon, full and lazy from a lingering lunch, and ordering two enormous, pre-rolled joints from the menu, along with a cup of strong, dark coffee and an assortment of baked goods. 

He likes it here, in this little dusty coffee shop overlooking the canal. There’s a fluffy gray cat that sits in the window, staking out a patch of sunshine for her own, and the shop is on a side street, tucked out of the way so that it’s frequented mostly by locals—or quiet tourists, anyway. It’s nice. There are just a few booths and tables scattered about, mismatched chairs and cozy, soft décor. The whole place smells like pot and incense, and when Bucky orders his joints he remembers, with a visceral and sudden clarity, what it had felt like the few times he’d smoked reefer in Brooklyn, ducking into an alleyway behind a bar and passing a joint with a few other men. 

The joints he buys here are different, blended with tobacco, and Bucky savors the harsh snap and burn of it in his lungs. He soothes his scratchy throat with hot, sugary coffee and pastries. He isn’t high—he can’t get high—but the act of smoking, peaceful and repetitive, is soothing all the same, and he likes it here. Likes the soft, sticky sweet cookies and brownies they sell, likes the strong dark coffee and the dusty, slightly rundown air the whole place has. Likes sitting here in the afternoons, smoking and eating sweet pastries and coffee until his stomach hurts a little, just because he can.

This is a good place to wait for Steve. 

*

“So what is it we’re doing, then?” Sam asks again, giving Steve a look that is a little pitying, a little exasperated. 

“We’re watching,” Steve says. 

“Watching.” Sam, clearly, is unimpressed. “We’ve followed your buddy through three countries, and here we are again, watching him. We’ve been watching him. For a week now.”

Steve nods. 

“Uh—yeah, why is that, Cap? I mean, you want your boy, don’t you? Well, he just walked into that damn coffee shop for the fourth day in a row.” Sam conspicuously pretends to check his watch. “So if his pattern is good, he should spend the next two hours in there getting high, and then come out with a box of brownies under his arm.” 

“So he’s not hurting anyone,” Steve says. “There’s no rush.” 

“He’s not hurting anyone,” Sam repeats.

“Right.”

“Are we following him because we’re afraid he’s going to hurt people? Or are we following him because we’re afraid people are going to hurt him?” 

Steve winces, scrubbing a hand through his hair. “Both, I think.”

“Well, if you’re afraid he’s going to hurt someone, shouldn’t you go get him? Maybe let him know you’re here?” Sam sounds frustrated. 

“I think he already knows,” Steve says. And—yeah, it’s true. He’s pretty sure Bucky knows he’s here. 

He thinks—is nearly convinced—that Bucky is toying with them. There’s the way Bucky has been appearing just barely in Steve and Sam’s line of vision—across the canal and up the block, lingering just for a moment, almost looking right at them, only to disappear around the corner a moment later, as if he’d never been there at all. The way he’ll damn near catch Steve’s eye, and then a passing tram will obscure him from Steve’s view—and when it’s passed, Bucky will be gone. Like he’s teasing.

Bucky looks good. It’s not something Steve lets himself consider very much, but occasionally he can’t help himself. Without the Winter Soldier getup, the leather and the mask and the eight million little straps and hooks and closures, Bucky looks softer, but also more solid, somehow. Substantial. So far, he’s always been dressed in jeans, some casual shirt, a jacket or hoodie thrown over the top. Comfortable. 

That is, of course, a bit misleading. As casual as his clothing might be, Bucky has not looked exactly “comfortable” any of the times Steve has caught sight of him. He never looks at ease. His eyes scan his surroundings constantly, and the way he moves speaks of a kind of predatory gracefulness, power and violence always simmering below the surface. 

Still, Steve likes the way Bucky looks—a little softer, like he’s had enough to eat for awhile, finally. His cheeks are fuller than they ever were before the war, and they’d been a little soft around the edges even then. He’d always had a baby face, the kind that women seemed to swoon over. 

His waist is thicker, too. 

Then there is the—well. The food. The gratuitous and constant food consumption. 

In the week since Steve and Sam arrived in Amsterdam, they have caught glimpses of Bucky eating street food multiple times a day, ambling along the canals like a tourist, snack in hand. Steve has seen Bucky eating takeaway fries smothered in mayonnaise (as is the custom, which Steve finds abhorrent), hot dogs dripping with curry sauce (also weird), pizza by the slice (better), and something Sam calls falafel (a complete unknown). And all of this is on top of the long, lingering times when Bucky disappears into restaurants and comes back out walking slowly, carefully, that gloved hand resting on the side of his abdomen. Steve can’t know what he’s eating when he’s inside, but he guesses it’s a lot. He imagines that it is. When he considers it. Which he does. Often.

And, of course, none of that even takes into consideration the takeaway packages of pastries he always has when he leaves the coffee shop. Or the beers they’ve seen him drink. Or the bottles of soda. Or the little paper cups of coffee, which Steve figures Bucky loads up with cream and sugar, like he always did, before. 

Bucky eats a _lot_. Steve sort of wonders if he’s doing it purposely. Is that a thing? Excessive food consumption in order to command attention? 

It could be a thing.

Once, Steve recalls, Bucky had eaten an entire pie just to prove Steve wrong. It had been—interesting. God knew why, exactly. Bucky was always interesting to Steve.

Steve can barely remember a time in his life when he wasn’t panting after Bucky. Chasing him down the street as a kid, never quite able to keep up, Bucky always remembering and slowing his steps to match Steve’s—as if it weren’t a big deal, letting little asthmatic Steve, with his crooked back and weak legs, catch up with him. Following Bucky into the dance hall on a Saturday night once they were older, not because he particularly wanted to be there—he liked girls, sure, but mostly it had been an exercise in humility, if not abject embarrassment, to try to approach women in those days—but because he wanted to keep an eye on Bucky. Because he wanted, for reasons he wasn’t sure how to express, to see exactly what Bucky got up to. 

Christ, Steve can barely let himself think of it, but he can remember so many nights he spent standing in the shadows, watching Bucky push some girl up against the wall. He’d be kissing her sweet but touching her a little rough, pinning her, shoving one muscular thigh between her legs and letting her rub against him, letting her pant and moan on him like it was the best thing that had ever happened to her, getting pushed up against a cold brick wall by Bucky Barnes. Steve could never look away in those moments, could only stare, and fuck, was it because he wanted to be Bucky? Or because he wanted to be the girl? 

And one time—one time Bucky had _known_ , and as he cupped the girl’s breast with one hand, he’d turned his head just slightly and winked at Steve, wide and lascivious, like the whole thing was a game. Like it was a show he was putting on for Steve. 

It wasn’t a nice thing to do. Wasn’t nice for Steve to watch, and wasn’t nice for Bucky to let him. 

But Jesus, Steve had gone home and jerked himself raw that night. 

Steve thinks that this, now? This trip across Europe? Is another of Bucky’s games. And so help him, Steve wants to play. 

*


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve pines. Bucky eats. They both more or less enjoy it. Also masturbation.

When Bucky pushes the man up against the wall, gloved hand at his throat, Steve thinks he’s going to have to break his cover. Sam is already tensed beside him, ready to race across the canal and pull Bucky off the man, and Steve, even as he’s considering everything else, thinks in the back of his mind that Sam Wilson is a goddamned hero. Here he is, no superpowers, no wings in sight, ready to run into a fight with the Winter Soldier the moment he thinks it’s necessary.

Before either Sam or Steve can make a move, though, Bucky releases the man, letting him drop the few inches to the ground. Steve can’t see exactly what happens, but the man reaches one hand up to rub at his throat and waves the other in a classic “I surrender, I surrender” gesture, and then hands something to Bucky. 

Whatever it is, Bucky must be appeased, because he turns, almost robotically, and segues back into the crowd. 

The entire encounter had taken less than thirty seconds. 

“What the fuck was that?” 

Steve glances over at Sam. “I’m not sure.”

“Thought he wasn’t hurting anyone, Cap.”

“He’s not,” Steve says, and it sounds a little weak even to his own ears. “He didn’t hurt the guy.” 

Sam jerks his head across the canal, where the guy in question is slumped against the brick wall, one hand still rubbing convulsively around his neck. “He doesn’t look not hurt.” 

Steve sighs. Sam is not entirely wrong. “He’s not dead.”

“Not dead.” Sam snorts. “So that’s what we’re deeming acceptable behavior for your buddy, there? Managing not to murder people?”

_Pretty much_. “Just—stay here? I’m going to follow Bucky.” 

“Course you are.” 

Steve waves Sam off and steps into the throng of people on the street. The area is crowded, thick with tourists and locals alike, and a big sign hangs across the road in an arc, reading, “Beware of Pickpockets” in five different languages. Steve moves quickly, slipping through the crowd in the direction Bucky had gone. 

He only catches one more glimpse of Bucky that afternoon, walking out of a McDonald’s—as ubiquitous in Europe as they were at home, Steve had discovered—an overloaded paper sack in one hand and a huge cup in the other. Steve picks up his pace, trying to keep Bucky in sight, but he disappears into the crowd and around the corner. 

*

The stairs up to Bucky’s hotel room are twisty and narrow, and he has to duck his head a little to avoid smacking it on the ceiling. It’s a weird little hotel, an old building converted into haphazard hotel rooms. His is tiny, nothing more than a bed, a table with a TV perched on it, and a tiny bathroom with a shower but no tub. That’s okay—it has a big window overlooking the canal and a sturdy deadbolt on the door, and the little lady that works at the front desk glares at him like he’s vermin every time he comes in or out. She looks like she expects him to trash the place, or maybe leave a body behind when he checks out. 

He admires that in a proprietor. No false cheerfulness. 

Back in his room, he doesn’t waste any time, just unloads his McDonald’s bag and gets to work. 

He’d discovered fast food back in the United States, and he’d instantly been a fan. McDonald’s was his favorite. He liked the crispy little fries, small and uniform, salty and greasy and weirdly the same, whether you ordered them in America or Amsterdam or anywhere-fucking-else—he knows this because he’d gone to McDonald’s in Bulgaria and Romania, too. 

He has two large orders of fries in his bag. And two quarter pounders. And twenty chicken nuggets. And the milkshake that he’s already been drinking on his circuitous route back to his hotel. 

The first sandwich goes down really fast—like maybe six bites fast. For something that’s advertised as being such a generous amount of beef, it doesn’t really seem like such a big burger. The second one goes down almost as quickly. 

While he eats, he watches the news. It’s all in Dutch, so he doesn’t know what the fuck any of it is about. He doesn’t mind, though. It’s sort of nice, listening to a language that you don’t understand. Peaceful. Other than “dank je,” which means thank you, Bucky hasn’t learned a word of Dutch since he’s been here. Merchants seem perfectly happy to speak English with him in order to make a sale, and that’s okay with Bucky. If it weren’t for him and guys like him? They’d all be speaking German, anyway. 

He finishes the first carton of fries and moves on to the chicken nuggets, watching the tv anchor lady interview a tall blond guy who keeps nodding and waving his hands a lot. Bucky doesn’t know what he’s talking about, but he looks like Steve. 

Actually, half the people on the street look sort of like Steve. The Dutch are a tall, blond people. Bucky likes that about them. 

_Steve_. Bucky is pretty sure Steve could see him when he’d pinned that guy against the wall, earlier. Pretty sure that Steve was watching. 

It had felt weirdly good, knocking the guy around and knowing that Steve could see him. He’s not sure _why_ that should feel good, except that he wants Steve to know that he’s powerful. 

Of course, Steve already knows that. 

But still.

He reaches down and tugs at the button of his jeans, which feel like they’re cutting him in half. He sets down his little cardboard box of chicken nuggets and sucks in his tummy, unbuttoning. He exhales in relief and watches, a little dumbfounded, as his gut rounds forward. The cotton of his t-shirt clings to him, pulling taut over his middle. 

He kind of wishes Steve were here to watch him right now, to watch him eat, see how big his belly looks. Which is even weirder than wanting Steve to watch him punch some guy’s teeth down his throat. But god, he’d wanted it, when he’d had that guy pushed up against the wall. Wanted to smash his left hand right into that fucker’s face, shatter his jaw into a million pieces. 

He hadn’t punched him. Just choked him a little. He has the feeling Steve doesn’t approve of jaw shattering, even when the jaw in question belonged to a man who had _put his hand in Bucky’s pocket and stolen his goddamn bank roll_. Bucky had known what was happening the moment the man got close to him, had known he was being pickpocketed, and Jesus, he’d wanted to kill him. Had considered it mightily—but ultimately chose not to, mostly because he thought Steve could see. 

Steve wouldn’t have approved. 

Would he approve of this? Of Bucky sprawled on his little hotel bed, watching inane Dutch television that he can’t understand, eating cheap, greasy fast food? Jeans unbuttoned and unzipped, tummy rounding forward, a taut little ball attached to his thick waist? 

The Soldier never had a round belly. 

The Soldier also never got to eat chicken nuggets. 

Bucky finishes them and works slowly through the second sleeve of fries. By the time he finishes the last of his large chocolate milkshake, he’s slid down the bed until he’s leaned back against the headboard, almost prone, holding his belly a little. It doesn’t hurt, exactly—he could eat more, and he probably will later this evening. But he’s _full_ , all the same. 

He’s going to get fat—if he keeps eating like this, he will. 

What would Steve think? What would he say? What would he do if he could see Bucky right now, swollen tummy mounding up in front of him, jeans tight around his hips even when they’re unfastened? 

Bucky is no expert on normal human interaction—not by a long shot. But he’s pretty sure that showing off for your old best friend by punching people and eating until you can’t fit in your jeans is not normal behavior. 

But he’s not normal. Not anymore. 

He curls up on his side and sleeps, cool metal hand cupping his tummy. 

A few hours later, he goes back out, down the street to the coffee shop he likes. He smokes two joints, like always, lingering over sugary dark coffee and a plate of brownies and muffins. The girl behind the counter—not much more than a teenager, a pretty, round little thing who doesn’t seem to think he’s the least bit frightening even though she probably should—drops an extra pastry into his little to-go box when he’s getting ready to leave, handing it over the counter with a grin. “Enjoy,” she says, giving him a sweet smile. 

“Dank je,” he says carefully. 

When he gets back to his room, he immediately unbuttons his jeans again, taking them off completely this time. 

It’s late by the time he’s finished the entire box of pastries, and his stomach is packed so full it’s gurgling audibly. 

It should feel unpleasant, but it doesn’t, even though his tummy hurts. 

He wishes Steve were here. 

*

Steve tells himself he does it because he can’t sleep and he thinks maybe it will help. He slides his hand down his chest, his belly, slides it over his hip bone and down, _slow_ , like he’s playing hard to get with himself. 

He’s not doing it because he can’t sleep. He’s doing it because Bucky is driving him fucking crazy. 

On one hand, it makes sense. Bucky is gorgeous. Steve’s always thought Bucky was beautiful. He was beautiful when was a stocky little Brooklyn tough, all big blue eyes and chubby cheeks, a mouth on him the size of New York and twice as noisy. He was beautiful then, and he was beautiful in his uniform, all grown up and shipping out. He was beautiful the day he fucking fell. And he’s beautiful now, stalking through Amsterdam like the world’s angriest tourist, expression blank, body coiled and tense. 

But that—that isn’t, really, why Steve’s gripping his cock in his hand in a slow, filthy slide with only his own spit for lube. He’s not thinking about Bucky’s eyes, or his pretty pink lips, or even his metal arm, which would be a weird but understandably sexy thing to think about. 

Steve’s thoughts—pervert that he is—are alternating between watching Bucky shove a stranger against the wall and watching Bucky _eat_. Neither of those things makes sense, as jerk off material goes. 

Especially the food thing. Jesus. 

Bucky has been eating nearly nonstop, as far as Steve can tell. There are long lunches, huge chunks of time when he disappears into restaurants only to reemerge later, walking slowly, sometimes holding the side of his tummy, like it hurts. Like he ate too much. There are lingering afternoons in the coffee shop that end with Bucky striding back out onto the street, a little package of baked goods tucked under his arm. 

There are stops—so many stops—at street vendors’ carts, where he buys French fries and sandwiches, slices of pizza, cups of coffee, the crisp little waffles that are everywhere here. 

The parade of consumption is never ending, and it _shows_. It shows in the way Bucky moves, how he’s slower by the end of the day, still as deliberate and automated as ever, but slowed down, like he just can’t make himself move any faster. Sometimes the hand he presses onto the side of his tummy will slide down until, Steve swears, he’s _cradling_ his little belly. 

It shows in his face, too, the way his cheeks are fuller. He has a double chin again, the way he did before the war. It looks sweet on him, familiar. 

His clothes are too fucking tight, too. Steve can barely even allow himself to think about it, during the day when he’s trailing Bucky. But now, in the privacy of his own hotel room, with the sound of the television coming through the wall he’s sharing with Sam? Now he can let himself consider it. 

So he considers the way that Bucky looks absolutely shoved into his jeans, like maybe he has to lie down on his back and hold his breath before he does up the zipper. 

He considers the way that Bucky’s shirts—especially the red one he was wearing today—look too tight around his belly, clinging to the curve that didn’t used to be there. 

He considers the way Bucky’s jacket bunches and pulls around his shoulders and hangs open in the front, and can he even zip it? Steve isn’t sure. 

He thinks maybe he can’t. 

Fuck, he thinks about the way Bucky had looked, how quickly he’d moved, shoving that man up against the wall, looking so _big_ , thick and broad everywhere. 

He thinks about what Bucky must be eating when Steve can’t see him. All the meals he has when Steve isn’t watching. 

He thinks about the way that Bucky’s little tummy must look, under all of those layers. 

Bucky’s soft, round little belly that he keeps shoving so full of food that Steve can barely fucking breathe. 

_Fuck_. Christ, this isn’t normal, it isn’t right, but he can’t stop. 

Steve’s hand is moving faster now, a twist at the head, a little tighter grip at the base, and he’s thrusting his hips up, fucking his own clenched fist. 

All he can see is Bucky. Bucky leaned back in his bed. Bucky hunched over a table laden with food. Bucky unbuttoning those straining jeans so that his fat little belly can pooch forward. Bucky, Bucky, Bucky. 

Steve bites down so hard on his lip when he comes that it bleeds. 

*

The next evening, Steve watches from a few streets away when Bucky stops, in a back alley on the edge of the Red Light District, and starts talking with a woman.

She’s young and petite, with dark hair and a scarf around her neck. Her jeans are tucked into painfully high heeled boots, and she looks almost fragile, huddled against the cool April wind. It’s hard for Steve to tell much about her, but even from this distance she looks pretty. 

When Bucky produces a pack of cigarettes from his jacket pocket and hands one to her, then strikes a match on his thumb and lights it for her, Steve can barely breathe. 

It’s like walking back in time, and it makes Steve’s heart clench, to find himself once again watching while Bucky Barnes chats up a girl in an alley. Only this time, somehow, it’s worse. Back then, Bucky had talked to everyone—his mouth had run and run, ceaselessly, back then. Now, though—now Bucky doesn’t talk to anyone, and so this conversation with this beautiful woman seems especially egregious. 

Steve doesn’t want Bucky to talk to her. Doesn’t want him to give her cigarettes, light them with the kind of casual intimacy he used to bestow on women all the time, before the war. 

That was why women had always liked him so much, Steve knows now. Bucky had always put them at ease, always been able to establish that easy camaraderie with them, so that it didn’t seem out of place when he’d lean over and speak soft and low into their ear, make them laugh, hold their hands. 

Seeing him do it again now? no longer that young reckless kid from Brooklyn but the dangerous, powerful man he’s become? It guts Steve, somehow. 

He doesn’t want to see it. He can’t look away. 

Beside him, Sam whistles low between his teeth. 

“What?” Steve says, trying not to sound as snappy as he feels. 

“Your boy’s about to pick up an off-duty hooker, looks like.”

Steve flinches, looking at Sam and then back at Bucky. “What?”

Sam nods toward the building Bucky and the woman are standing beside. “She came out the back door there—we walked past the front of that building earlier. It’s all windows up front. She’s gotta be coming off a shift.”

Steve feels a little sick to his stomach. 

“Oh.” 

Suddenly he hates Amsterdam.

*

Bucky listens as she speaks, her voice lilting and musical, the Russian words tripping off her tongue. He answers her in kind, the language feeling comfortable in his mouth—more comfortable, sometimes, than the English he has been speaking recently.

She grins at him around her cigarette, exhaling a stream of smoke and telling him how nice it is to meet someone from home. “Are here for a vacation?” she asks, looking genuinely interested. 

“Something like that,” he says. 

She takes another drag and gives him a knowing look. “Or something not like that at all.” 

He nods. She’s smart—like every working girl he’s ever known. And he’s known several—met a few while he was Winter Soldiering, and has vague memories of knowing a few back in Brooklyn, too. “Maybe not quite like a vacation.”

She shakes her head. “Well, you enjoy your trip, Mr. Not Quite On Vacation,” she says, grinding out the cigarette under the pointy toe of her boot. “Thanks for the smoke.”

“Of course.” 

She brushes past him, gone on a wave of sweet perfume, and Bucky shoots his eyes past her, just for a moment, looking for a glimpse of Steve and Sam, who had been following him just a few blocks back. 

He can’t see them, but he suspects that they were there just a moment ago. Watching him. 

He hopes they were. Hopes _Steve_ was. 

The idea very nearly puts an actual smile on his face as he heads back to his hotel. In fact, he’s in such a good mood that he stops for a few beers on the way back, shoving the waist of his jeans as low as he can, giving his belly plenty of room. 

**Author's Note:**

> I am, naturally, a sucker for comments.
> 
> Follow me on [tumblr](http://www.missjanedoeeyes.tumblr.com) if you want to talk about Really Important Things like chubby boys and Sebastian Stan's double chin.


End file.
